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Gorbachev by Mikhail S. Gorbachev

Book Description

Here is the whole sweep of the Soviet experiment and experience as told by its last steward. Drawing on his own experience, rich archival material, and a keen sense of history and politics, Mikhail Gorbachev speaks his mind on a range of subjects concerning Russia's past, present, and future place in the world. Here is Gorbachev on the October Revolution, Gorbachev on the Cold War, and Gorbachev on key figures such as Lenin, Stalin, and Yeltsin. The book begins with a look back at 1917. While noting that tsarist Russia was not as backward as it is often portrayed, Gorbachev argues that the Bolshevik Revolution was inevitable and that it did much to modernize Russia. He strongly argues that the Soviet Union had a positive influence on social policy in the West, while maintaining that the development of socialism was cut short by Stalinist totalitarianism. In the next section, Gorbachev considers the fall of the USSR. What were the goals of perestroika? How did such a vast superpower disintegrate so quickly?
From the awakening of ethnic tensions, to the inability of democrats to unite, to his own attempts to reform but preserve the union, Gorbachev retraces those fateful days and explains the origins of Russia's present crisis. But Gorbachev does not just train his critical eye on the past. He lays out a blueprint for where Russia needs to go in the next century, suggesting ways to strengthen the federation and achieve meaningful economic and political reforms. In the final section of the book, Gorbachev examines the "new thinking" in foreign policy that helped to end the Cold War and shows how such approaches could help resolve a range of current crises, including NATO expansion, the role of the UN, the fate of nuclear weapons, and environmental problems. Gorbachev: On My Country and the World reveals the unique vision of a man who was a powerful actor on the world stage and remains a keen observer of Russia's experience in the twentieth century.

Other Editions...

Books By Author Mikhail S. Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev is living proof that the word is mightier than the sword; that ideas, not armies, change the world. Two key words, Perestroika and Glasnost, characterised his philosophy - words that came to represent change and freedom in the universal consciousness. This book traces the evolution of his vision.

For more than a decade Mikhail Gorbachev has been engaged in working to protect the earth and its inhabitants via the organization he founded in 1992, Green Cross International. This work is by this statesman. It serves as a 'manifesto' that does not compromise its integrity to political, ideological or national sympathies.

Reviews

UK Kirkus Review » Retrospective reflections from the last President of Soviet Russia (1989-91). Gorbachev has some pertinent and intelligent things to say about Tsarist Russia (not as backward as it was portrayed) and the Bolshevik Revolution (inevitable, and necessary to modernize Russia). He also argues that the very existence of the USSR, despite its blemishes, served to keep unrestrained capitalism on the leash for over 70 years and that it was only the aberration of Stalinism that extinguished the development of socialism in Russia. He examines why the Soviet Union collapsed so comprehensively in 1989-91 and defends his own role in perestroika. In the last section of the book he explores the problems of NATO expansion, nuclear weapons proliferation, environmental degradation and the proper role of the UN. (Kirkus UK)

Author Biography - Mikhail S. Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991, and President of the Soviet Union, 1988-1991, currently heads the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and lectures widely. He is also the author of Perestroika and Soviet-American Relations, The Search for a New Beginning: Developing a New Civilization, and The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons.George Shriver has translated and edited many books, including Nikolai Bukharin's How It All Began: The Prison Novel and Roy Medvedev's On Soviet Dissent, The October Revolution, Let History Judge, and Post-Soviet Russia (all published by Columbia).

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